Parker gets his preferred scenario for record assist

Basketball historian Tony Parker had a sense of what he wanted to happen Saturday night at the AT&T Center. It went beyond becoming the Spurs’ all-time leader in career assists, a feat he accomplished in the third quarter of the Spurs’ 107-96 victory over the Oklahoma City Thunder.

If at all possible, Parker knew which teammate he wanted to pass to for the basket that would move him past Avery Johnson.

Just as Utah’s John Stockton fed Karl Malone for the basket that moved him past Lakers great Magic Johnson as the NBA’s all-time assists leader in 1995, Parker wanted Tim Duncan to be on the shooting end of the record-breaking assist Saturday.

“That’s the exact feeling I had,” Parker said. “Stockton to Malone, and that’s what I said to Timmy: ‘Come on, I want you to be the one to knock it down.’?”

Duncan and Parker are in their 11th consecutive season together, the longest-tenured continuous teammates playing in the NBA today. Duncan, the Spurs’ captain, was gratified, both that Parker wanted him to be part of his big moment and that he was able to fulfill Parker’s wish.

“I wished it had happened 10 shots before that, but I’ll take it as it was,” Duncan said. “He actually came to me and said he wanted me to hit the next shot.

“I said, ‘All right, I want to hit every shot.’ After I hit it, I realized why. It was great.”

Parker finished with 42 points against the Thunder, who began double-teaming him when he came off high pick-and-roll sets. He told Duncan to be ready the next time they ran the play.

“He missed the first one, and then he made the second one. It meant something to me that it was Timmy because we’ve been playing so long together, 11 years. It was special that Timmy made that shot.”

Parker added two more assists by game’s end, giving him 4,477 for his career.

Taking the challenge: After coming off the bench in Thursday’s victory over the Hornets, Spurs rookie Kawhi Leonard was back in the starting lineup against the Thunder with a big assignment: Defend Kevin Durant, the NBA’s No. 3 scorer, averaging 27.0 points per game.

Leonard was told well before tipoff that he would start and how the coaches wanted him to challenge Durant.

“They wanted me to guard him and just run around and make it tough for him,” he said.

Spurs coach Gregg Popovich joked before tip-off that he would be happy with anything less than a 40-point output for Durant. In fact, Durant scored only 22, five below his season average and just seven more than Leonard scored.

“He did the best he could for a young rookie who has never really seen these guys before and really hasn’t practiced any of the defensive strategies we might use. We just tell him: ‘Do this or do that,’ and that’s pretty tough.”